The microwave oven is a ubiquitous feature in modern society. However, its limitations are well known. These include, for example uneven heating and slow absorption of heat. In fact, ordinary microwave ovens, when used for heating (e.g. defrosting), cause temperature differences as high as 100° C. between different locations in the heated object, resulting in creation of hotspots, regions of thermal runaway. Fore example, frozen foods that are thawed in a microwave oven may have one or more part (e.g. the outside) that is warm or even partly cooked before or other parts (e.g. in the interior) are even defrosted. Also known are hotspots that occur within a heated cup of liquid that may result in personal injury to a user. One common method that attempts to reduce hot-spots is to rotate the article being heated. This method does not provide uniform heating as would be desired.
One method of providing uniform heating is to allow the heat deposited in a hot spot to diffuse to surrounding regions and heat them by conduction. Such methods may include an intermittent heating procedure in which the heating is periodically stopped to allow diffusion of heat. While this method may be used in conjunction with the methods of the present invention, by itself the stop and go method of heating is either extremely slow (due to the low heat conductivity of most foods, which require long stop periods to make the method effective) or are relatively ineffective. Another method is to heat at a very low power. This can be used, for example, with large frozen bodies. If the heating is slow enough, then the excess heat at hot spots diffuses before the temperature rise at the hot spot becomes objectionable. However, this method requires up to 10 or 20 times as much time for heating to be fully effective. Due to convection from the object, it is not a serious option for cooking or heating much above room temperature.
A number of papers have been published in which a theoretical analysis of the problem of microwave warming of a cryogenic sample has been carried out. Because of the difficulties of such analysis, such analysis has only been carried out on regular shapes, such as spherical and ellipsoidal shapes. Experimental attempts have apparently been made on kidney sized specimens, but results of these experiments do not indicate that a viable solution for defrosting kidneys is available.
Moreover, there does not appear to be a solution for defrosting other organs, or for defrosting warming or cooking foods, of more arbitrary shapes.
Prior art publications include:
S. Evans, Electromagnetic Rewarming: The effect of CPA concentration and radio source frequency on uniformity and efficiency of heating, Cryobiology 40 (2000) 126-138
S. Evans, et al., Design of a UHF applicator for rewarming of cry preserved biomaterials, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng. 39 (1992) 217-225
M. P. Robinson, et al., Rapid electromagnetic warming of cells and tissues, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng. 46 (1999) 1413-1425
M. P. Robinson, et al., Electromagnetic re-warming of cryopreserved tissues: effect of choice of cryoprotectant and sample shape on uniformity of heating, Phys. Med. Biol. 47 (2002) 2311-2325.
M. C. Wusteman, Martin et al., Vitrification of large tissues with dielectric warming: biological problems and some approaches to their solution, Cryobiology 48 (2004) 179-189.
A paper entitled “Control of Thermal Runaway and Uniformity of Heating in the Electromagnetic Warming of a Cryopreserved Kidney Phantom” by J. D. J. Penfold, et al., in Cryobiology 30, 493-508 (1993) describes a theoretical analysis and experimental results. While some experiments were apparently made with a kidney sized phantom, the main reported results are with a uniform spherical object.
As reported a cavity was fed with electromagnetic energy at 434 MHz from three orthogonal directions (x, y, z). The x and y feeds were provided from a same generator and a phase change was introduced so that the field was circularly polarized. The frequency was varied in steps of 32 kHz (apparently up to about 350 kHz maximum) to match the input impedance as it changed with increasing temperature.
All of the above articles are incorporated herein by reference.